238 A HISTORY OF AMERICA IN 100 MAPS
Anti-communism drove US foreign policy after World
War II. Every region of the globe was seen through
the lens of the Cold War, and this often obscured
more complicated dynamics. The 1949 communist
revolution in China led Harry Truman to send
troops to Korea in 1950. Four years later, President
Dwight Eisenhower quietly began to support South
Vietnam in its struggle to remain independent from
communist North Vietnam. Eisenhower explained
that this distant country demanded American aid
because its fate might affect that of Thailand,
Burma, Malaya, and Indonesia. President Kennedy
acted on the same “domino theory” by sending
16,000 American “advisers” to aid the corrupt—but
firmly anti-communist—leader of South Vietnam.
The assassination of Kennedy left his successor to
reckon with Vietnam. President Lyndon Johnson was
keenly aware that it was a Democratic president—
Truman—who had “lost” China to the communists,
and he was determined to avoid the same with
Vietnam. At first Johnson was a reluctant warrior,
and in the 1964 presidential campaign he promised
not to commit the United States to any land wars in
Asia. Then, in August, two American destroyers were
attacked off the coast of Vietnam in the Gulf
of Tonkin. Johnson responded by authorizing limited
bombing of selected North Vietnamese bases and
storage facilities, an act which appeared both
prudent and restrained. In November he won a
landslide victory against Republican Barry Goldwater,
who had advocated a much more aggressive reaction
to the Gulf of Tonkin incident.
Over the next few months, the North Vietnamese
intensified their infiltration of the South by supplying
Viet Cong guerillas with weapons and men. An attack
on the American air base at Pleiku in February 1965
prompted the United States to launch a sustained
bombing operation of North Vietnam, and then
deploy 3,500 Marines to defend the American air
base at Danang. This bombing campaign had little
effect on North Vietnamese resolve, yet it sparked
widespread protests on American college campuses.
To buttress the strength of South Vietnam,
Johnson’s advisers began to press for an increase
in American ground troops. The president himself
worried that an escalation of the war would
undermine his domestic agenda, and spent
WHY ARE WE IN VIETNAM?
US Information Agency, “Aggression
from the North,” 1965
hours deliberating military strategy with his advisers.
A close reading of the transcripts of these deliberations
reveals that withdrawal from Vietnam—though
advocated by some—was never seriously considered
by Johnson or his senior advisers. That, they argued,
would be to lose face in the Cold War, which was
unacceptable.
While the South Vietnamese government teetered
on the brink of collapse, Johnson took his case to the
public, arguing that the shadow cast by communist
China could not be ignored. To abandon Vietnam,
he insisted, would be to compromise American values
and invite further aggression worldwide. This poster
was issued to generate support for the expanding role
of the US in Vietnam at this pivotal moment of decision
in 1965. It was made by the United States Information
Agency (USIA), and published in its magazine, Free
World. The USIA was an arm of the executive branch
established to promote American ideals and policies
abroad during the Cold War. Free World was translated
into Chinese and Vietnamese, with a circulation of
90,000 squarely aimed at the educated classes of
South Vietnam: teachers, students, civil servants,
the military, and businessmen.
The poster forcefully characterized the situation
in Vietnam as an aggressive attempt by the North to
take over the South. Like the State Department memo
on which it was based, the broadside presented an
increased commitment to South Vietnam as the only
viable course of action. The map marks the locations
of Viet Cong attacks, including Pleiku and Danang,
arguing that the longstanding and “brutal campaign
of terror and subversion” by North Vietnam must be
stopped. Just as the Committee on Public Information
framed American war aims in 1917 (page 180), the USIA
propagated intervention in Vietnam in defensive
and protective terms.
Just after the broadside was issued in April,
Johnson authorized the introduction of ground troops
and quietly doubled the draft. In July 1965, 125,000
Americans were sent to fight in Vietnam, and by the
end of the year the number had reached 200,000.
With this increase came a crucial shift of tactics and
purpose, from defense of air bases to the initiation
of combat in the field, what many came to call
“search and destroy” missions. At precisely this time,
Ho Chi Minh stepped up his own funding of insurgency
in the South, escalating the conflict further. After 1967,
Johnson—and then President Nixon—faced increasing
resistance at home. The Cold War consensus that had
held since the 1940s was severely tested by the
Vietnam War.